The Vanity Fair Diaries

by Tina Brown

I would so love to have heard about Granny’s struggles and her shame, which must have been profound in that censorious era, but Mum uncharacteristically forbade me to raise it with him or, she insisted, marital mayhem would have ensued. Her own family history is really just as unexplored. When her sister, Sonje, died, Chris was going through her private papers and was gobsmacked to find that her German grandfather’s name was Fekkel Kohr and he was Jewish! Is that why he fled to England just before the First World War? Escaping rising anti-Semitism? Perhaps the anti-Semitism followed him, because he shot himself in the garden shed, according to the death certificate. Why had we never heard about this from Mum?

  Mum loved talking about her crazy family. Her eccentric Irish mother’s obsession with moving house, and the succession of Catholic schools she attended, tyrannized by crafty, punitive nuns, but we hadn’t heard a word about her half-Jewish roots until Fekkel’s birth certificate showed up. When confronted she just went vague and didn’t want to be drawn out. To me, it explains the feeling she always had of being an outsider. Maybe this is what bound Dad and her together so tightly, the family secrets they shared.

  As I write this now I can hear the rise and fall of their complicit laughter from the patio as they sit out under the stars, and I feel, as I used to do as a child, a pang of exclusion from the depths of their bond. Perhaps it’s why, when I detect facades, the lashing words begin to form.

  1990

  WE ARE FOUR

  Wednesday, January 10, 1990

  A new decade! It’s amazing how fast the eighties recedes in the back mirror. Dynasty finally bit the dust at the end of last year and it now feels as antique as ancient Rome. What will the nineties bring? Schiff has done a great essay in the mag on the Particle People, which we’re all becoming—splintered apart by the inequity of wealth, by the seventies counterculture before it, the youth boom, the changing demographics, isolated by our camcorders and fax machines and home computer modems on the desk. That’s why we like Roseanne, because she’s so old-school and overweight. How do particles not become alienated? By feeling part of a mass wave that technology will deliver. Jason Epstein at Random House has produced a telephone directory–sized tome called the Reader’s Catalog that makes forty-nine thousand different books available, a personalized bookstore that gives you backlist as well as current. According to Schiff, by the midnineties computer owners will be able to buy everything from their home offices and retail marketing will become a dinosaur. Who will then advertise in Vanity Fair? Happily, he doesn’t address that question.

  Thursday, January 12, 1990

  Stricken to learn that the fashion designer Patrick Kelly has died of AIDS. He was only thirty-five! He lived in such a joyful, colorful world. I remember the thrill of opening the box containing my VF fifth-anniversary dress, buried in rustling tissue paper, which he brought to New York from Paris himself. His ribbons and buttons had such innocent whimsy. He was always in motion in his baggy overalls as he tucked and pinned and flourished his spools of vibrant fabrics. I grieve that so many bright lights like Patrick, one by one, continue to be stolen from us by AIDS. It’s not only a heartbreaking loss but more depletion of talent, more decimation of creativity that’s going to have an unimaginable impact on the future of taste. RIP, dear Patrick.

  Monday, January 22, 1990

  In flight, New York to London

  Feeling combative.

  The “relaunched” Tatler under Nick Coleridge’s editorial directorship arrived, and I was taken aback to see that the typeface and many other design features are a direct ripoff of VF. Fuck that! We were scheduled to go to dinner at the Newhouses the same night and I was so annoyed that I avoided talking to him. Julie Kavanagh has been in from London and staying with me and she said, why not start a London edition of VF to block all the copycats? After sleeping on it, I loved the idea. And a much better response than bitching about something that’s not going to change. Same editorial except a few regional tweaks and different ads, therefore very little overhead for a new magazine. It’s a score on every front. So instead of adding—as Si clearly expected by his nervous expression—to his day’s pain when I walked into his office first thing in the morning, I hit him with my new idea. And suggested we could test-market it by upping our newsstand circulation in the UK right now. He seemed intrigued by the idea, perhaps because he felt joyful that he wasn’t about to get a diva attack. He promised an instant market study of the notion.

  Had spats with a lot of the editors this week. Sharon seems more and more entwined with her Baader-Meinhof/Bloomsbury group of Susan Sontag, Barbara Epstein from The New York Review, Shelley Wanger, and the King of the Scorpions, John Richardson. Individually I like them all. Together they are a lethal band. She’s going to take the two months off in Europe and let’s hope it improves the mood. One good thing in all this flux—I rehired Michael Roberts! He’s been living in Paris, where he’s been much happier, doing illustrations for French Vogue and taking pictures for The Independent. I called him there on the off chance he was available and asked him to be our new Paris bureau chief. He immediately agreed in the same tone as if I only saw him last week rather than four years ago, when he melted off to London. So happy to have him back in the fold.

  Tuesday, January 23, 1990

  Today I had a tragic meeting with the young editor Duncan Stalker, who had been at VF when I first arrived as a Leo hire and whom I let go because he never seemed to get on board with what I was trying to do. But he has proved in the years since to be so talented at Manhattan, inc. and then at Traveler that I realized I’d been wrong. I rehired him as a senior editor in November, five years after we first parted company, knowing he was HIV positive but hoping for the best. Now he came to tell me he has been going through hell with his dying boyfriend and feels he can’t cope anymore and has to quit. I felt stricken as I looked at him. He’s suddenly so pale and insubstantial. His head has become a strange bulbous shape and his shoulders look as if they could crumple like paper. I told him he could be paid for as long as … And both our eyes filled with tears. Duncan, this promising young editor of thirty-two, began to speak of himself in the past tense. “I wanted so much to have a magazine myself,” he said. “Now I never will.” He broke down and we wept together. He asked me to look after the writers he’s been nurturing. I told him to look after himself, to use the office whenever he wants it.

  Wednesday, January 31, 1990

  Gail Sheehy’s Gorby piece is a big hit. People seem to love the surprise of slapping him on the cover under the banner headline “Red Star.” Next issue good, too. A piece on the last days of Alfred Herrhausen, the CEO of Deutsche Bank who was blown up in Bad Homburg by some splinter group of the Red Army Faction, Mort Rosenblum on the Honduran drug connection, Marie Brenner on a gay modeling cult, and a hysterical piece by John Seabrook about the gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who rose from being Miss Bagel to a confidante of Noriega. What’s not to like here?

  Sunday, February 4, 1990

  A comic encounter with the Italian Vanity Fair crowd. What Italian Vanity Fair? Yes, in typical Newhouse fashion, the first Doug and I heard of its existence was when I got a fax from Italian Condé Nast, asking me to send the artwork for the logo! Meanwhile Doug was getting his own bombardments re dispatching to Milan VF promotional T-shirts, pencils, notebooks, etc. Si is clearly trying to make the point that VF is his franchise and my participation is irrelevant. Why aren’t I put in charge of it? Now that I am launching UK VF I don’t care as much, but I will care if VF Italy is crap and damages the mother ship.

  Next I learn that Si’s nephew, Jonathan Newhouse, who has been put in charge of the European company, was in town and wanted me to have lunch with Mr. Pietroni, the editorial director of European Condé, and his photo director. We all trooped to the Four Seasons. Unfortunately Mr. Pietroni speaks not one word of English. Jonathan at this point speaks Berlitz French and the female photo editor no language anyone could recognize. Pietroni was a mournful figure with a
five o’clock shadow and an outsize Borsalino. Every so often there was a long burst of rapid-fire Italian that I assumed was an effort to understand the philosophy of the magazine until the gamine photo director would say, “Mr. Pietroni, he ask, when please can he have the Madonna pictures?” The Four Seasons service was impossibly slow and by the end of it I was desperate, trying not to look wistfully into the next booth, where Ed Victor was lunching with Richard Saul Wurman from TED and others. Downstairs in the coat check I tried to be expansive to the Italian contingent as the Victor party assembled there. “Ed,” I said, flailing, “may I introduce you to the most distinguished editor in all of Italy, Mr. Pietroni?” But I hadn’t noticed that the lineup behind me had changed and a voice said, “I am not Mr. Pietroni. I am Jonathan Newhouse.” Turns out that Jonathan, perhaps in an effort to look as cosmopolitan as his new role dictates, was also now sporting an enormous Borsalino. Ed Victor said he laughed about this all afternoon.

  On Thursday Mike Ovitz came in to see us at VF for a change. He was transfixed by my wall of past covers, immediately wanting to know how many each had sold. He seemed happier, liberated from his LA woes, and launched into an immediate brainstorm session about the next cover, which was a glimpse of the fun he must be at the office on a good day. “Robin Williams?” Me: “Nah.” Ovitz: “Fantastic movie. Bill Murray?” Me: “Won’t show up.” Ovitz: “This time I can deliver him. He’ll do it. I’ll tell him. Sean Connery?” Me: “Too old!” Ovitz: “Okay. Pin that.”

  “I’d like Warren Beatty but I’ve given up,” I said. “Don’t,” he said, “I’ll make him do it. That’s what I’ll do for you.” Now he’s come up with a favor that in due course he will call in. Shortly after he left, Jane Sarkin’s phone was red-hot with CAA agents pitching their stars for covers, which must have meant that Mike, always enjoying internal competition, had told each one of them there was a VF cover going if they could strike now. It was a good indicator of why he is so successful. Parachuting into my office, putting himself in the middle of my problem of the moment, and then trying to solve it to his own advantage. Regarding my own multiple courtships, he offered, “Diversify, but never leave your power base,” which felt like very good free career advice from the person who charges more for it than anyone currently operating in Hollywood. I felt again that I made the right decision about not leaving Vanity Fair.

  Thursday, February 22, 1990

  I have avoided Alice Mason’s Nights of the Living Dead for a year, but she was persistent this time. Arthur Carter, who was there as usual, looking mysterious, said the nineties are already over and it’s only six weeks into the decade. The combination of events, he says, makes it almost too easy for journalists and historians. There’s the Trump divorce (Marla’s brazen confrontation with Ivana on the ski slopes in Aspen over Donald was a moment worthy of a Movie of the Week), the dissolution of Drexel Burnham Lambert, the pollution and retrieval of Perrier water, and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison as the world went crazy with cries of FREEDOM. All that is now required is for Alice herself to go up in a puff of smoke. I couldn’t wait to escape and give a ride to Nick Dunne to plot out his definitive story on Donald and Ivana’s life and times. He told me that Marla Maples is a red herring and that Donald has been having a fling with a well-known New York socialite. Wow. That would be a headliner and is hard to believe. Though this could give Trump what money can’t buy—the silver edge of class. They all fall for class in the end.

  Friday, March 2, 1990

  A memorial service at St. Bart’s Church for Malcolm Forbes. Another nineties cataclysm—all the great movers and shakers are going down. It was very sudden, and there are whispers of suicide because of illness. And there is only one illness that people whisper about, and that is AIDS. Could Malcolm have decided he couldn’t face being outed at last? He was of a generation that couldn’t bear it, and always feigned masculinity so strenuously, with the gruff voice and motorbikes. It would have been so great if he could have declared the truth and turned away the shame so many others feel, too, but he chose this way instead. Or that’s how I read it. The service was another boldface ecclesiastical blowout such as I am getting used to attending, with Sirio from Le Cirque standing outside, serving as a sort of funeral maître d’. It was as over the top as Malcolm would have loved, with Scottish kilts and cabinet ministers and Gallic players performing on the hunting horn that used to be at Malcolm’s French château. I half expected him to float over in one of his beloved balloons.

  The Phoenix House fund-raiser for drug rehab has been preoccupying my time. The TV producer Grant Tinker, who’s donating the soundstage in Hollywood, insists we ought to have entertainment. I have never been a fan of entertainment at parties. It just stops you from talking, but this of course is not a party. It’s a ticket-buying fund-raiser so we have to offer something more than rubber chicken and chat. But what? For the most blasé crowd of Hollywood A list who know more about entertainment than any other crowd on earth? I called an emergency caucus of Ian Schrager, Reinaldo, and Colacello. As I hoped, as soon as Ian’s head was engaged, my panic began to abate. “Don’t try to do Hollywood,” said Ian. “You’ve got to bring out New York sheen. We’ll get Anita Sarko to do the disco. I’ll pay for it. What about two white pianos like Fabulous Baker Boys? What about getting Liza to do the Michelle Pfeiffer bit?” Now I am excited myself.

  “We’re flying out on Thursday to look at the space,” I said.

  “I’ll come,” said Ian. “I’ll get the red-eye back. I’ll look at the space with you and I’ll bring Robert Isabell. Then we’ll figure out the theme.” Hooray! But the next day anxiety returned when we found Liza is booked that night to perform with Frank Sinatra, and Harry Connick—another suggestion—did Lilly Tartikoff’s benefit two weeks before.

  I called Ian to get plan B.

  “Well, let’s just think,” said Ian in his methodical way. “New York. What does it mean to LA? [pause]. Statue of Liberty … Rockettes … Truman Capote…”

  “Capote! Robert Morse!” I shout. Morse is currently getting raves in a one-man show about Truman on Broadway. What could be more New York than Capote? We both knew immediately this was pay dirt. “Twenty minutes,” said Schrager, already editing it down. “We gotta bring him out and get him to do twenty minutes as Truman.”

  Turns out David Brown is the show’s producer and I call him immediately. Would he close the theater for the night and have Morse fly to LA and perform Truman for Hollywood? I could almost see his mustache light up. “I LOVE the idea!” he crowed. “If the logistics work and I can shuffle the tickets to a dark night, I’ll do it. Give me till tomorrow at four.” I love these creative producers. The Schragers and the David Browns who get the idea, say yes, and make it happen.

  Wednesday, March 7, 1990

  Four Seasons, LA

  The Tru coup was achieved with a bit of brinkmanship. The management of the Booth Theatre had agreed, but on Friday night Robert Morse hadn’t. David Brown said, “Look, Tina, he doesn’t want to do it. There’s only one hope. Tomorrow night is the hundredth performance. We’re giving a little cocktail party for him between shows. Why don’t you turn up and bat your blue eyes at him.” I called the office and got ahold of Charles Churchward, who was just locking up. “Remember that great cartoon of Capote at a table with all the Park Avenue women at La Côte Basque that’s now hanging on my wall?” We had assigned it to go with the extract of Gerald Clarke’s biography of Truman two years ago. “Take it down, gift-wrap it, and send it over to me.” Then I called Nick Dunne, who is an old carousing friend of Robert Morse, and Bob Colacello, who knew Truman so well. We watched the last ten chilling moments (I had seen it before), then David Brown scooped us up and took us downstairs to await Morse in the bar. He came out, so unbelievably different from his stage persona, and embraced Nick right away. There were choruses of goodwill and I gave him the wrapped cartoon gift.

  “Oh, my goodness, how wonderful!” he cried when he opened it. />
  “Bobby,” said David, “Tina was hoping you’d reconsider her little proposal, which would get such great press for the show.” I went down on my knees, literally. “Please do this, Mr. Morse,” I began, and Nick gave him the intimate, back-knowledge smile that I think clinched it.

  My new favorite person is Jay Presson Allen, the writer/producer of Tru. She’s sixty-eight, a silver-haired lady of the theater in appearance, but utterly direct and candid in her approach.

  “You know, Tina,” she said, “old age sucks. A few years ago, I’d get a cold and bounce back. Now the cold turns into some asshole virus that lays me low for weeks.” It was unexpected dialogue coming from this grande dame in a silver bob and pearls.

  All the way to LA to check out the Culver Studios soundstage our group swapped seats and plotted different aspects of the evening. Ian is getting married in two weeks to Carolina Herrera’s publicist, Deborah Hughes, and is consumed with anxiety about it. When not working with me, he and Reinaldo were planning his stag party. A detail I overheard was a white limo rolling up to collect Ian with a female driver who, when she stepped out to open the door, would be naked from the waist down. (That will make Ahmet Ertegun happy at least.) Our project was a distraction for Ian. When we got to Culver City, he and Robert wanted time alone on the soundstage to conceive the visuals and we went off for lunch.

  The plan they came up with sounds so great. It has the cavernous soundstage enclosed with a cyclorama on which enormous images will be projected at specific moments in the evening. It’s great to bring our social buzz to raise the profiles of efforts like Phoenix House. Drug-addicted kids have zero appeal to vanity donors who want their names on a building—until their own kids succumb.

  Tuesday, March 20, 1990

  Unexpected hiccup. All the guests were assembled on the lawn of Ian’s house in Southampton on Friday with the rabbi waiting, while upstairs Ian and Deborah fumed in different rooms about the telephone directory–sized prenup agreement that she had second thoughts about. Reinaldo and Carolina waited at the heliport with the Perelmans for the signal to take off and finally did so anyway, arriving just in time to be told the wedding is off.